Vladimir wrote:
> As I understand what the current draft says
> (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-font/2009JulSep/0780.html), the
> EOT-Lite conforming UA will render a font if it's capable to do so,
> regardless of the presence of rootstring (i.e. completely ignoring the
> root strings, whether mismatched or not).
It makes sense that the EOT-Lite proposal makes such a statement about
EOT-Lite fonts. But, again, this presumes a distinction can be made
between EOT-Lite and EOT-Classic fonts when encountered in the wild,
because ignoring the rootstrings in a format that deliberately states
that rootstrings should be ignored is different from ignoring
rootstrings in a format that deliberately states that
User Agents must validate that the page using
the embedded font is within the list of URLs
from which the embedded font object may be
legitimately referenced. [1]
I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that a browser that fails to follow
this when encountering an EOT-Classic font is at legal risk. If not, why
all the fuss about DMCA? At the very least, this seems to me a question
that needs to be examined by qualified lawyers experienced with this
kind of issue.
At present, the non-IE browser makers are deliberately not touching EOT
fonts because they don't want to get entangled with the rootstring
issue. They're not supporting EOT but ignoring rootstrings: they're
keeping the heck away from EOT altogether. It seems to me that they must
continue to do so, because the status of EOT Classic fonts doesn't
magically change when EOT Lite comes along. This means that while EOT
Lite fonts can be backwards compatible with IE<=8, EOT Classic fonts
must not be forwards compatible with EOT Lite. Somehow the two formats
need to be clearly distinct at the file level, such that an EOT Lite
implementing browser can process the one but avoid the other.
JH
[1] http://www.w3.org/Submission/2008/SUBM-EOT-20080305/#RootString